Sticky Mango is a casual restaurant near London’s Waterloo station (which I haven’t been to). Owned by chef Peter Lloyd, Sticky Mango has won awards for Lloyd’s modern interpretations of Southeast Asian cuisine, and now the UK’s leading distributer of high quality meal kits, Finish & Feast,  has partnered with Sticky Mango to offer a “Southeast Asian feasting experience” for two people, which includes 5 dishes from the latest 9 course tasting menu at Sticky Mango, for just £75 plus delivery.

For starters we had Malaysian chicken curry puffs, and black pepper tiger prawns. For the puffs, which looked like small Cornish pasties, I just had to reheat them in the oven for 8 minutes. They were served with a coriander yogurt.  I sautéed the prawns for 2 minutes plus 30 seconds when mixing in the black pepper sauce. Garnishing my plate were pea shoots, dried pineapple and a few cubes of jicama (Mexican turnip).  The puffs had a lovely aroma and they were well supported by the yogurt dip. The prawns packed a fair spicy punch, so I recommend eating the puffs first, before your tongue is blasted by the prawns!  The dried pineapple had a nice cooling effect. 8/10

The ‘main’ course was a collection of Asian-inspired dishes to share. Firstly I prepared a whole filleted seabass by rubbing the fish all over with an “Indonesian spice paste” and wrapping the 2 fillets in a banana leaf with kaffir lime leaves and lemongrass. The fish only needed 12 minutes in the oven, and when the banana leaf was opened I plated the fish with pickled vegetables and coriander cress on top and “sambal matah” and a wedge of lime on the side. It tasted very good with the mild spices, the pickles were a good foil and the sambal was very mild too.

Mr A took charge of frying the rice, as he always does at home. Jasmine rice was fried with leeks and truffle paste for a couple of fragrant minutes and then put into a bowl, which was turned onto a plate, so we had a dome of rice. On top of the dome was placed a duck egg (which I overcooked) and a ginger and garlic crumb was sprinkled onto the white of the fried egg.  The idea was to cut into the egg and then mix the oozing yolk and crumbed-up white into the rice, to make it rich and unctuous.  By overcooking the egg I missed this experience, but my end result was still very tasty.

In another pan I sautéed some shiitake mushrooms for a minute, then added broccoli and water chestnuts to the pan for 2 minutes, before stirring in some oyster sauce until the vegetables had been fully coated.  This was a lovely dish with sweet and charred flavours.

In total this main course was very tasty, enjoyable to eat, and pretty filling. 9/10

Dessert was “Mango and black sticky rice” and the only reheating required was for a coconut and vanilla sauce in a small pan. On a serving plate I arranged the black rice and placed half a ripe mango on top. This was then covered with candyfloss.  At table side the warmed sauce was poured over the candyfloss, which made it disappear to reveal the mango on the rice, now in a pool of sweet sauce!  Such fun to recreate restaurant theatre at home!  I thought the rice was a little undercooked and chewy, but with the coconut and vanilla sauce it was quite pleasant to eat. The star of this dish was the mango: one of the best examples I’ve had in the UK, it was soft, sweet, juicy and packed with flavour. 8/10

There was one final element to this ‘feasting box’; a Pandan macaron.  Pandan is a tropical tree with fragrant leaves. I had pipe some green “kaya jam” onto two bright green macaron meringue halves, then place the other halves on top, to give Mr A and I one quite large macaron each.  Mr A enjoyed reflecting on eating kaya jam as a boy in Brunei and I was surprised to learn from him that it’s made by mixing coconut, sugar and egg!  Normally the jam is a golden colour in Asia, so I’m unsure why this version was green, and how much colouring had been added to this petit four. It was very sweet too, so I don’t think I could have eaten a second one. 8/10

Overall I thought this was a very tasty and good value make-away box.8/10